CraigT82

What time did you capture? Earlier is better when its higher up but its harder to find in the blue sky (and have to take sensible precautions regarding the sun)

Planetary imaging is all about the post processing. Stacking in itself wont bring out more detail, but it improves the SNR to the extent that you can go to town on the sharpening, and it's at the sharpening stage where the magic happens! I haven't seen your image as my phone wont open tif files, but my advice is to collect and stack more frames, thousands rather than hundreds, and then put the stacked image in registax and drag the No2 slider to the right under the wavelets tab. This will bring out the detail you're looking for (hopefully!) As for the colour cast, this can be corrected post sharpening. Easiest way is to open up the image in photoshop or gimp and use the colour balance tools. It is a good idea to try to get the colour balance right at the capture phase. In firecapture you can adjust the blue and red channels to match the green channel before capturing.

I spent some time today really getting to grips with processing Mercury data and think this is the best I'm gonna get out of the capture from the 20th. I collected 4x50,000 frame videos at approx 300fps, stacked 80,000 of them and sharpened in registax using only the first slider. Then into PS for contrast enhancement, levels adjustment and some unsharp masking and resized to 200% Presented alongside winjupos simulation for reference. The brightest spot below the equator is Kuiper crater (62km diameter) 8.75" Fullerscope with APM 2.7x Barlow and Altair GPCAM3 290m, Baader IR685nm filter. Cheers

You seem to be missing the central hand bolt, the one that tightens the mount to the tripod. You can't really do anything without that, do you have it??

Very nice work!

You're probably miles out of focus. Have you run though the full focus range once you put the camera in? I suggest a high gain and 1/2 second exposure to pick up stars.

This is the first time I've tried to image Mercury so not sure on how good it gets. I got it at about 6.15pm when it was still at about 38 degrees so fairly high, I think others try to get it around midday when it's up at around 60 degrees.

Was absolutely delighted when I finally found it, almost gave up several times as I was sure I wouldn't spot it! Gotta say though that Mercury is very nice to observe due to it's rarity of occurrence but this current phase of Venus in the blue sky is one of the most beautiful things to see in a telescope.

I didn't think I could ever find Mercury in the blue sky (not having goto) but with it being currently close to Venus I thought I'd give it a go. I blocked off the sun using a parasol and found Venus fairly quickly in the finder, and shot off 30,000 frames with the Baader IR685nm filter, Altair 290mono and APM 2.7x barlow. Then using a 30mm plossl in the main scope, scanned around the area Mercury should be by manually panning the scope around, using Venus as a starting point. Took about 20 mins before I finally spotted it in the eyepiece (couldn't see it at all in the 9x50 finder). Swapped over to the camera and captured 200,000 frames at 305 fps with the IR685nm, stacked 10%. After capturing the videos I put an 8mm BST in and spent a while observing Mercury visually, as it was the first time I'd ever found it! Showed the wife the view too who was very impressed.

For planetary imaging you can pretty much ignore the central obstruction size. The effect of a large CO is to reduce contrast, which is bad for visual use but for imaging this contrast is restored in the image processing. An 8" RC should make a good planetary imaging scope if you can reliably keep it well collimated. The open front will help to reduce tube currents somewhat but you still want to pay attention to what the air is doing inside the tube. Damian Peach now mostly uses the Chilescope RC for his planetary imaging... don't hear anyone complaining about his images! Attached below

Really nice captures Pete. Well done. Will have a have a crack at Mercury myself but I cant find it without scanning the scope around and dont wanna get too near the sun!

That's amazing! Can't believe that no scope was involve in making that! Hand held too 🤯 The detail on the craters at the southern edge is really nice and sharp. I think there is a touch of CA at the northern edge but that's splitting hairs really. Top work! 👍

Very nice results! Well done.

I use a wixey digital angle gauge with magnetic base. Accurate to 0.1 degree. And about 25 quid online. Stick it to top of scope and Robert's your fathers brother

Thanks for the efforts and comments everyone. I also had some input from the lunar section at the BAA and the consensus is that it is an impact crater, and it even has another tinier crater within it (easliy seen in the quickmap app). Thanks again Craig

Can you do a slight pre-stretch on each sub before stacking? Batch process somehow?

Sorry I should have said to use the celestron bracket you will need to drill the tube. That svbony bracket is really good value, wish I'd seen that when I got the celestron finder!

I have the celestron finder attached to my newt. Had to drill the tube to fit it though (three holes in a triangle formation) and use a couple of washers under the front screw to raise it up a little. Looking at your Bresser pics you will definitely need to drill the tube to fit it unless you can solve the problem like John has above, fitting into a SW bracket.

Hi there, that's a nice old Fullerscope you have that looks ripe for restoration, or at least some TLC Look like it's a 8.5" f/7.5, with a focal length of 1623mm ("FL 63.9in"). That is a B grade mirror, denoted by the B at the end of the serial number, which will perform well, certainly better than mass produced units from China. They also did A grade (best) and C grade. Hopefully the coatings on the face of the mirror, and the secondary mirror too, are in decent condition and nice and reflective? Hopefully it hasn't spent long pointing up like that without the front cap on? My own Fullerscope has a B grade mirror and it had provided some of the best views I've ever had of the moon and planets. I have some decent condition mount parts that you could have for free if you're interested not sure where you're located? See for sale thread here... Someone had already bagsied the two pillars but the rest is still there. These bits could be posted so just PM me to discuss if you're interested.

Very nice images. Getting very thin now. Nice to see these as I cant get anything on Venus myself now due to obstructions

You can still get benefit using an ADC with a mono camera, as there is some residual dispersion within the colour bandwidth of each RGB filter. The larger the aperture and the lower the planet the more benefit it will give. There are some image examples on Martin's website showing this

For planetary imaging in the UK an ADC is almost essential at the minute.... pretty much every planetary imager I know of uses one. For visual observers they are perhaps less useful as can be a little tricky to set correctly visually (imaging software has handy ways of helping you set the levers). More info on how they work o and their benefits on Martin Lewis' website here... http://www.skyinspector.co.uk/atm-dispersion-corrector--adc

I have a image of the crater Albategnius, which is located just to the east of the well known Ptolemaeus/Alphonsus/Arzachel trio. The central peak of Albategnius contains a small crater at the very top, however I can't find any information (googling) on whether this is an impact crater or is related to volcanic in some way. If an impact it is a pretty damn nicely placed one! Do any lunar observers have any information on this feature in their books? Cheers

Perseverance will also carry the experimental Mars Helicopter, so we should hopefully get some amazing aerial drone-style imagery of the Martian surface. https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/

Hi Tom, welcome to SGL. Craig